They sat thus, until the twilight grew so deep and shadowy that they could scarcely see each other. It was very cold outside, where everything began again to congeal and whiten, and all the world resigned itself with a groan to the long, long interval of dead darkness, hopelessness, and cold which must deepen before day. At the end of a vista of shrubs and great evergreen plants, the red glow of the drawing-room fire shone out, shining there like a ruddy star in the distance. Lady Mary drew her shawl round her with a little shiver, and her husband got up and yawned in the weariness of suspense. Had he gone away without giving an answer? Had they done nothing but harm, though they had wished so much to do good. They both started like a couple of guilty conspirators when at length a step was heard approaching, and Edgar appeared, half hesitating, half eager, against the glow of the distant fire. CHAPTER XVI. A Pair of Philanthropists. I need not describe the many struggles of feeling which Edgar went through on that memorable Sunday, before he finally made up his mind to accept Mr. Tottenham’s proposal, and do the only thing which remained possible for him, his only alternative between work of some sort and idleness--between spending his last little remnant of money and beginning to earn some more--a thing which he had never yet done in his life. It was very strange to the young man, after so long an interval of a very different life, to return vicariously, as it were, not in his own right, to the habits and surroundings of luxury. He felt a whimsical inclination at first to explain to everybody he encountered that he was, so to speak, an impostor, having no right to all the good things about him, but being only Mr. Tottenham’s upper servant, existing in the atmosphere of the drawing-room only on sufferance and by courtesy. People in such circumstances are generally, I believe, very differently affected, or so at least one reads in story. They are generally pictured as standing perpetually on the defensive, looking out for offence, anticipating injury, and in a sore state of compulsory humility or rather humiliation. I do not know whether Edgar’s humorous character could ever have been driven by ill-usage to feel in this way, but as he had no ill-usage to put up with, but much the reverse, he took a totally different view. After the first conflict with himself was over, which we have already indicated, he came to consider his tutorship a good joke, as indeed, I am sorry to say, everybody else did--even Phil, who was in high glee over his new instructor. “I don’t know what I am to teach him,” Edgar had said to the boy’s parents when he came down to the conservatory on the memorable Sunday I have already described, and joined the anxious pair. “Teach him whatever you know,” Lady Mary had answered; but Edgar’s half mirthful, half dismayed sense of unfitness for the post they thrust upon him was not much altered by this impulsive speech.